89 books like Lewis Carroll's England

A teasingly insightful glimpse of the Victorian Oxford of Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, the two protagonists – and yet they aren’t! Yes, there is an Oxford University don with a penchant for photography, and yes his favourite subject is a ten-year-old local girl, and yes the text is scattered with subtle Wonderland and Looking-Glass references, but this is otherwise a quite different, very cleverly contrived, story. Structured as the inner thoughts of the main characters, After Such Kindness engagingly explores the dilemmas posed by the unusual friendship between a mature clergyman bachelor – Arnold convincingly captures Carroll’s playful sense of humour – and an inquisitive and trusting young girl, while sustaining a lurking sense of foreboding through to a thought-provoking finale.

This fictional interpretation of the creation of Alice’s Adventures is seen from the viewpoint of a constant, yet largely unremarked, fixture during these critical years: the Liddell family governess, Mary Prickett. The Oxford context of the time is convincingly depicted, and some of the burning issues of the day – Darwinism and Nonconformism, for instance – are interwoven with the more immediate tensions within the Liddell household, interpreted by an author who has more right than anyone to comment because Tait is the great-granddaughter of the real Alice herself. To sustain the pace she condenses the real events of 1857 to 1863 into a single fictionalised year, drawing on many well-known facts and suppositions – including Carroll’s rumoured amorous interest in Miss Prickett – and some lesser known details from her own family’s archives.

Actually, it is ten books, covering 1855 to 1897 (with a reconstruction of the missing journals of April 1858 to May 1862 – their disappearance being the cause of countless conspiracy theories!). These diaries are the principal source of practically every piece of Lewis Carroll/Alice analysis that has ever been published, and provide a uniquely revealing chronology of the genesis of one of the world’s classic works of literature. These volumes mean that the enigmatic genius of Lewis Carroll is not the sole preserve of academics or historians; through them, he becomes accessible to us all. Transcribed and fully indexed by Edward Wakeling, a renowned world expert, whose extraordinarily detailed and insightful bibliographical and contextual notes provide an unparalleled insight into Victorian Oxford (London, Surrey, Yorkshire, Sussex, and more).

Some of these volumes are hard to get, but there are some remaining copies at the Lewis Carroll Society if interested. 

Mention the name ‘Lewis Carroll’ and most people will immediately think of the two Alice books. Very few would equate the name to Charles Dodgson, the photographer. This, however, is the aspect of the multi-talented Oxford don which Gernsheim, a professional photographer himself, appraised in his 1949 first edition for the very first time, concluding that Dodgson was ‘the most outstanding photographer of children in the nineteenth century. Many of the black and white plates substantiate this claim, but equally, Dodgson’s mastery of this new invention enabled him to meet and photograph (sometimes uniquely) numerous famous writers and artists, as well as many Oxford contemporaries. As an aside, Edward Wakeling’s 2015 Catalogue Raisonné is a comprehensive listing of every one of Dodgson’s hundreds of known photographs.

I first came across this book through Twitter, and was very excited to find it on my present pile later in the year! This is a brilliant telling of each aspect of Keats’ life, looking at the impact the young poet had on those around him, those who knew him by reputation, and those who are still impacted by his legacy – the author included! The research and deliverance of this book is clearly a labour of love, and it makes for engaging reading and a sympathetic look at this historical figure.

Why Keats? Well, Henry Fotherby in my own book has the same overall outlook as the young poet – but he manages to complete his path to becoming a surgeon!

James Holland is a popular historian because his works are so eminently readable. This book was his first and sprang from the BBC documentary, Battle for Malta, that he also wrote and presented.

Once Mussolini declared war on Britain, Malta, an island no bigger than the Isle of Wight, became a strategic keystone in the Mediterranean and was destined to become the most bombed place on earth. Holland uses survivor testimonies, diaries, and personal letters to focus his narrative on the tribulations and suffering as well as the hopes and fears of the ordinary Maltese and the servicemen sent to defend them. This is a splendid book that does much to illuminate a somewhat neglected part of British military history.

The book’s title immediately drew me in. Atlases and maps obviously help make things visible, so atlas and invisible did not seem like two words that belonged together. In actuality, the title was a bit misleading, albeit effective in gaining my attention.

Cheshire and Uberti provide over 200 different maps and other spatial visualizations of a wide range of things that are generally unseen or at least difficult to see but can be gainfully mapped out to better understand the world. Examples range from the geographies of telecommunication and shipping routes to glacial movements and wildfires.

The illustrations were striking and plentiful, matched by well-written text. The book certainly gave me lots to think about.

A fantasy read by the husband-wife author team Tiffany Roberts. This is a dystopian/insane asylum twist on Alice in Wonderland, featuring some absolutely gorgeous imagery and a Cheshire Cat hero named Shadow. Shadow is a character to swoon over—charming, heroic, and mysterious—he’s the book boyfriend you’ve been waiting for.  

I will never forget this story. It’s about betrayal and street justice. Sometimes, it’s the only way to regain your soul. 

When New York socialite Jo Slater meets a French countess, they become fast friends. Shortly after, bad things start to happen.

First, her husband dies under mysterious circumstances. Next, she loses everything because the beneficiary of her husband’s will is the countess. Struggling through poverty, she comes up with a brilliant plan for justice. 

Just like that, the French countess had vanished, and Jo had regained her losses. Best of all, she had regained her smile; it was a certain kind of smile, like that of a Cheshire cat

Like Golding, Garner is best known for his children’s books – tales that spring from the ancient mythology of his local Cheshire and wander into realms of high fantasy. But it is this slim novella, a collection of four stories binding as many generations of Garners (they have inhabited the region for centuries and they were, all of them - up until Alan, craftsmen, builders, laborers) that moves me to raptures. Beginning with a wide-eyed child’s discovery of cave drawings, the stories haul stone up above ground to lay out the longwalls of Garner’s mason progenitors and erect the spire of the local church, worn by Garner’s grandfather "like a dunce-cap.” The imagery and wordplay are stunning, binding dialect and landscape like a spell.